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SMB News

Natalie Peer wins 2nd place in the 2015 Wiley Exposition

We are very pleased to announce that Natalie Peer has been selected as the 2nd place winner in the Medical and Life Sciences category for her outstanding oral presentation. She will be receiving a $500 scholarship for her efforts.

This year’s event was the most competitive event that was hosted, with over three hundred applications in the initial round of submissions, and over a hundred and fifty presentations taking place the day of the event. There was an overwhelming amount of cutting-edge research and scholarship on display, and all are to be commended for their efforts.

Leanne Whitmore Receives a FASEB MARC Travel Award

Congratulations to Leanne Whitmore, a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Ping Yi, who has received a prestigious Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) MARC (Maximizing Access to Research Careers) Travel Award to attend the International Society for Computational Biology’s Seventh Annual RECOMB/ISCB Conference on Regulatory and Systems Genomics from November 9-14, 2014 in San Diego, CA. These NIH-sponsored awards are meant to promote the entry of students, post doctorates and scientists from underrepresented groups into the mainstream of the basic science community and to encourage the participation of young scientists in national and international conferences. See more at: http://www.faseb.org/Policy-and-Government-Affairs/News-Room/Article-Detail-View/tabid/1014/ArticleId/1052/MARC-TRAVEL-AWARDS-ANNOUNCED-FOR-RECOMB-ISCB-CONFERENCE.aspx

Dr. Mary Sanchez-Lanier selected for advising award

Congratulations to Professor Sanchez-Lanier for receiving top honors from the Washington State University Academic Advising Association. Read more here.

Congratulations to Dr. Patricia Hunt, a Professor in the School of Molecular Biosciences, who has been awarded the 2014 Zoetis Veterinary Research Excellence Award from the College of Veterinary Medicine at WSU in recognition of her outstanding research accomplishments. The award is given to faculty who have made significant contributions to research that benefits veterinary medicine. Dr. Hunt will be presented with the award and also give a talk on her research at the CVM Research Symposium Banquet, which will be on October 30, 2014. More information about the award and previous CVM recipients can be found on: http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/news/awards/zoetis-research

Congratulations to Weihang Chai for receiving a $1.45 million grant from the National Institute of Health. The grant will study the role of the CST protein complex in preserving genome stability. Read more about the award here.

Congratulations to our 2014 Summer Graduates

Congratulations to our 2014 summer graduates:

Dr. Tyson Eucker, Ph.D. in Molecular Biosciences successfully defended his dissertation entitled Campylobacter jejuni Manipulates the Focal Complex to Invade Epithelial Cells and Induce Secretion of Interleukin-8 and has been accepted a position at Boehringer-Ingelheim Vetmedica in Ames, IA.

Dr. Elizabeth (Lisa) Evans, Ph.D. in Molecular Biosciences successfully defended her dissertation entitled Investigating the Degradation of Retinoic Acid via Cytochrome P450 Enzymes, CYP26A1 and CYP26B1, in the Postnatal Testis and been accepted as a postdoc at the University of Texas – M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Dr. Susan Wang Receives NSF Grant to Modify the Property of Soils

Congratulations to Dr. Wang, an Assistant Professor in the School of Molecular Biosciences, who, along with her colleagues at the Colorado School of Mines (Golden, CO) was recently awarded NSF grant CMMI-1359671, “Collaborative Research: Use of Microbially-Induced Calcium Carbonate Precipitation to Improve Seismic Behavior of Saturated Sands”. The goal of this 3 year grant, of which she is a Co-PI, is to investigate and optimize microbial metabolism to modify the engineering properties of soils and prevent potential damage from earthquakes.

Bryce Henderson, a Junior Biochemistry Major, was just selected as a 2014 participant in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute EXROP Program (www.hhmi.org/exrop). Bryce will be working this summer at the University of California-San Francisco in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph DeRisi, a HHMI Professor who develops novel genomic approaches to the study of infectious disease. SMB wishes him a wonderful summer!

Graduate Student Nicole Clark awarded fellowship through NSF

Graduate student Nicole Clark has been awarded a predoctoral fellowship through the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. The first year graduate student will be doing research on understanding non-classical progesterone signaling in female reproduction in Jim Pru’s lab. Read more here.

Dr. Raymond Reeves Delivers the 2014 Distinguished Faculty Address

“A Surprise Path to Regenerative Medicine” on Thursday, March 27, as part of the annual Showcase celebration of Washington State University. This annual award recognizes a faculty member whose achievements in research, scholarship and teaching place him or her in the front ranks of his or her discipline. Professor Reeves has been a faculty member since 1979 and is one of the most highly cited scientists at WSU. He is ranked in the top 1 percent of cited authors for journals in the life sciences and in 2010 was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for contributions to the field of chromatin research, particularly for studies elucidating the structure and function of the HMGA family of non-histone architectural proteins. The HMGA proteins play a central role in regulating gene transcription, DNA replication and control of cell proliferation. They are involved in both the cancerous transformation of normal cells and in the promotion of tumor cells to more malignant states, making them attractive targets for new anti-cancer drugs. Read more here.